Night Terror (32 page)

Audrey felt through her mother’s skirt and blouse. But there were no pockets, no key secreted on her still-warm form. “Nothing!”

Richard nodded. “It’s here somewhere, Aud. You have to find it.” He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. When she knelt beside him again, he opened them. “I’m okay. Find the key.”

She glanced around the room. Besides three arm chairs and an empty side table, there was a floor lamp and a chest of drawers with a TV and some medicine bottles on top. She dumped each of the drawers on the floor, kicking through the photographs and papers. A stack of brown notecards bound with a rubber band caught her eye and she flipped it over. Twenty-year-old report cards—hers. But no key. She glanced at Richard and shook her head.

“Check the other rooms,” he whispered.

This time through the maze she moved slower, more deliberately. Zach’s room didn’t bear searching of course. There was nowhere in there to hide a key and that would have been the last place either Martha or Merle would stash one. The closest room to the one Richard was in was a bedroom, and it was only slightly less Spartan than Zach’s. So maybe Mother hadn’t been punishing him. Maybe she had simply lost any concept of the needs of a small child beyond the requirement that he be protected from Tara. Or else this was Merle’s room. But going back over the layout in her head, Audrey realized that there were only the two beds downstairs. So Merle had lived in the house above. Of course he would have. He had to keep up the front that
someone
lived there.

Martha’s bed stood beside a dresser that matched the one in the sitting room. Again Audrey dumped the drawers onto the floor and this time she carefully sifted through the contents by hand, shoving aside white nylon panties and knee-high stockings, praying to find the key somewhere in the jumble.

She could no longer feel Zach at all and panic started to well up inside again. Audrey didn’t know how much longer Richard could last and she knew that she was missing something. Something important.

But there was no key in the pile of clothes. In desperation she shook out each item separately, willing the key to clatter to the floor. Finally she threw the last cotton blouse onto the bed in disgust.

Where was it? Richard was right. There had to be another key down here somewhere, but where? In the tool room? Hidden in the bathroom? Why would mother do that? Surely the idea was to keep the key away from Zach, and naturally both Martha and Coonts had to know that Zach would have found opportunities to explore the bath. She couldn’t picture her mother using the tool room. That would have been Merle’s domain. It had to be in here or in the storage closet where Zach had discovered the photo album. She’d search it next, but first she was going to make absolutely sure of the bedroom.

She tore the linens off the bed, shaking them out carefully before discarding them in the corner. There was nothing under the pillow or stashed in its case. She flipped the mattress off. Nothing between it and the springs. Finally she leaned them against the wall and stared at the frame. The room was a disaster area, but no key had appeared. She slammed the springs back down into place, frantic. She started toward the door, ready to search every nook and cranny of the storage room, when a photograph on the wall caught her eye.

When she looked closer, she realized that it wasn’t really a photo at all. It was a
photocopy
of the image Zach had shown her. The one with Tara’s face torn away. Only the copy was made
before
the image had been torn and Audrey was stunned at the likeness of Martha and Tara. They were twins. Just like she and Paula. Maybe that was why it was so easy for Tara to mix up Audrey’s memories about the two of them.

The photo hung beside the bed where Martha could stare at it before going to sleep. Stare into the eyes of the woman who had destroyed her life and turned her into a hunted animal living in a burrow in the ground. Audrey could only imagine what it must have been like to lose not one but three children, and a husband, and to know all along—at least on some level—who the monster was that was stealing them away or killing them. No wonder her mother had gone mad.

As Audrey lifted the picture off the nail on the wall and studied the faces, her finger touched something cold and metallic on the back side of the frame. She flipped the picture over in her hand and there was the key, the tape that held it to the dustcover yellowing with age. She ripped it off and raced down the corridor, the
something
in the back of her head still screaming to get out. But she was too focused on escape—on finding Zach again—to listen to it.

“I’ve got it!” she shouted at Richard in passing.

It was all he could do to nod and smile.

She slipped the key into the lock with shaking fingers, careful not to break it in her haste to open the door. The metallic clicking of the lock reminded her again of Zach, the way he had opened the lock in the barn, the way he had fixed the pistol. But it reminded her of Tara too, of the metal clicker she used to put Audrey under, reminded her of what Tara would do to Zach when she got him into
her
basement, and she jerked the door open and raced to the stairs. To her dismay, she could not shove the trapdoor open. Tara must have placed the clothes back inside and locked the hasp shut again! Audrey slammed upward again and again, but the pile of clothing deadened her blows and finally she collapsed on the stairs, her mind racing, trying to think what tool she’d need now to bust her way to freedom. She heard Richard gasping down the hall and she caught her breath, sliding down the stairs on her butt before heading back down the corridor.

She smelled the fire before she saw any evidence of it. Glancing up she noticed a thin layer of gray smoke winding across the ceiling like a flat snake. Richard was hacking and each cough seemed to send a wracking pain through him. His hands were flat on the floor as he tried unsuccessfully to brace his body against the agonizing vibrations of his own exhalations.

Fire.
That
was the something she’d missed. Of course Tara wasn’t going to just leave her here alive. She wouldn’t take a chance that the dog might not have done her in, although Audrey still didn’t understand why it hadn’t. She and Mother and Richard were supposed to end up a pile of ashes in Merle Coonts’s cellar. When and if they were ever found, Audrey had no doubt that Tara would have things
set up to look as though
Audrey
was somehow to blame. Audrey
was
crazy after all. Everyone knew it.

“She set the house on fire!” whispered Richard, nodding up toward the ceiling. “You have to find the ventilator and turn it off before we suffocate.”

“How do I do that?”

Richard could barely shake his head. “Trip the breaker. There must be a panel somewhere. And find the main vent and plug it.”

She started down the hallway again, figuring the panel would probably be in the tool room, when Richard called to her. “You have to brace that door shut!” he said, nodding back at the metal door she had wanted so badly to open. “The whole barn might collapse down into the hole and if it breaks through into this basement the cellar will burn too.”

Audrey stood for just a second, unsure of what to do first, but the smoke caught in her lungs and she raced for the tool room. That was the logical place to find the breakers.

54

AS VIRGIL AND COODER
rounded the front of the house, Virgil was surprised to find the entire barn already engulfed in flames. The blaze was rapidly flowing along the walls of the outbuilding that attached the structure to the house.

It was the gas, of course. Stan said Mac carried in three cans. But he bought four. The first thing Virgil had done when he got back to his cruiser was call Birch. Just as Virgil feared, Birch hadn’t found the fourth can in the rented sedan. And Tara had had plenty of time to make off with one.

“You’re sure they’re in there?” said Virgil. He was standing in front of Merle’s door, glancing over his shoulder at Cooder.

Cooder nodded and Virgil kicked the door in. A faint whiff of smoke caught in his lungs as he stumbled into the house.

“Where are they?” he shouted back at Cooder.

No answer. Jesus. This was no time to be having a Cooder conversation.

“Where are they, Cooder? We don’t have much time!”

“The barn.”

The picture of the barn, blazing like a football bonfire, lit the front of Virgil’s brain.

“If they’re in there, they’re dead!” he shouted.

Cooder frowned and shook his head. “Basement.”

“Even the barn basement ceiling’s got to be on fire!”

Cooder seemed to be studying something hidden behind his eyeballs. “Underneath.”

“What?”

“Underneath.”

“Shit,” muttered Virgil, stepping full into the doorway and motioning Cooder to follow. “Come on. You’ve got to show me, and for the love of God, hurry up!”

As they stumbled down the stairs into the box-lined cellar, Virgil thought of the old steamer trunk. His claustrophobia started to tickle at the back of his brain and he shook it off. That was the least of his worries right now.

“Dear God,” he muttered, stopping. “Are they alive?”

“She is,” said Cooder, pushing him ahead.

“In that trunk?”

A pause to study again. “Yeah.”

“Cooder, if you get me killed down here,” said Virgil, kicking and tossing the boxes aside rather than searching for a path, “I’m going to hurt you bad. Okay?”

“Okay, Virg.”

But long before Virgil or Cooder reached the basement of the barn, they could see the flames ahead. The heavy beamed floor had collapsed at the back of the building blocking the rear doors and the upper walls were coming down with it, creating a mountain of blazing embers and sucking air through the house above and behind them like an interior tornado. To Virgil’s surprise, Cooder edged past him and disappeared through the door into the barn basement.

“We can’t go in there, Cooder!” shouted Virgil, getting a lungful of smoke and hacking ferociously. He leaned against the stone wall, dragging his T-shirt up across his mouth to catch his breath.

“We can’t go back!” shouted Cooder, leaning back through the door and pointing over Virgil’s shoulder.

“Mother!” rasped Virgil, glancing behind him. Burning embers of dust were falling like a hellish snow from the low ceiling joists into the tinder-dry boxes, which lit up one by one. The house must have gone up like a pile of straw as soon as they’d entered the cellar. A wide claw of fire scratched its way down the cellar stairs and the roar of the blaze was now coming from the house as well as the barn.

“Over here!” shouted Cooder, dragging Virgil through the door toward a pile of burning beams that had collapsed from the floor above. Right over the spot where Virgil remembered the old trunk sitting. Cooder started kicking at the beams and boards. Virgil heard the sound of all the boxes igniting in a loud
whoomp.
The fire was tracking them through the cellar, a golden-eyed serpent with glimmering teeth. Virgil ripped his shirt off and wrapped it around his hands. He grabbed one of the beams and heaved while Cooder kicked.

“Are you sure she’s in there?” he shouted at Cooder. If Audrey was locked up in the trunk, they couldn’t leave her. But if Cooder was wrong and they ended up wasting their last seconds of possible escape time busting into a trunk full of old clothes, Virgil figured he just might hurt Cooder.

Cooder ignored him, kicking at the now smaller pile of burning wood until his pants caught fire. He ignored the flames licking at his legs, lashing out with his heavy boots until the old trunk stood revealed, black and inflamed. Virgil dragged him back, slapping at Cooder’s legs with his shirt until the last of the flames were out. Cooder reached down and ripped open the trunk lid.

Virgil peered inside. The clothes were stacked just as Virgil remembered them. “It’s just a goddamned trunk, Cooder! We’ve got to get out of here.”

Cooder shook his head, tossing clothes over his shoulder like a threshing machine firing wheat into a truck. “It’s how we get in,” he said at last.

“What?” said Virgil. He kicked the old trunk, surprised at how solid it felt, as though it were bolted in place. When the last of the clothes were gone, he shoved Cooder aside and leaned down into it, slapping the sides, testing the bottom that
did
give off a hollow ring he hadn’t noticed before. With nimble fingers, he felt for the joint where the bottom met the sides. There was a space as wide as a fingernail all the way around that shouldn’t have been there. He jerked his pocket knife out, slipped it into the gap, and folded back the false bottom.

To Virgil’s surprise, Cooder shoved
him
aside, leapt into the trunk and disappeared, like Alice vanishing down a rabbit hole. Cooder’s head—reappearing seconds later, like a
prairie dog on the lookout for hawks—would have looked humorous if it hadn’t been accompanied by the sound of rending wood directly overhead. Virgil hiked his legs over the side of the trunk and dropped into the stairwell almost on top of Cooder. They slid to the bottom on their butts, just in time to be showered by sparks as another load of burning timbers crashed atop the trunk. The heat on Virgil’s back was intense. The only light in the tiny room was the red glow of the blazing lumber directly overhead, but he spotted the door into the subcellar instantly.

“Go on!” he shouted at Cooder. “Get out!”

He pushed himself up off the stairs and ended up standing beside Cooder, uselessly twisting the knob that would not give. He kicked the door with his boot, panic starting to win out. The tight little room and the sense that the entire building was collapsing around them like a house of cards had Virgil’s fear reaching its breaking point. And they were about to suffocate to boot. It wasn’t so much that the smoke was getting thicker in the room, it was the sense that the air was disappearing. Virgil knew what was happening. The fire was eating up all the oxygen in the basement, leaving them nothing but carbon monoxide to breathe. And a man couldn’t breathe carbon monoxide.

“We have to get out!” he shouted, edging around Cooder to face the door squarely. He kicked it hard just below the knob, but it was a heavy metal unit with a steel frame set into a block wall. He kicked it again with no more effect, already beginning to feel weak from exertion and lack of oxygen.

“Kick it, Cooder,” he gasped.

Cooder shrugged, but did as he was told.

Twice.

“It won’t open, Virg.”

“It has to open, Cooder. I didn’t come here to die in a hole in the ground.”

“They must have locked it from inside.”

Why hadn’t
he
thought of that? Cooder swore Audrey was down here. Their family car was parked in the drive. That meant there was somebody to unlock the damned door!

If Cooder was right and she was alive.

“Audrey! Anybody! Can you hear me? Open up!” He pounded on the door with both fists and kicked it again with the toe of his boot. A large section of beam, sparking like fireworks, clattered down the stairs and landed near their feet.